Brian Armstrong is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.
By lowering the barrier to create new digital currency applications, we'll see an explosion in the number of ideas tried. We'll invest in, partner with, or build a number of new applications in this space, including replacements for many of the services people use in finance 1.0.
I think it's going to end up a lot like the Internet. Some countries try to regulate the Internet - bitcoin will be very much like that. It will be legal, and there will be some countries with currency control.
It's important to understand how Coinbase thinks about regulation and compliance in the digital currency space. As an exchange, we view compliance as key to digital currency's success.
At Coinbase, our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We believe that open protocols for money will create more innovation, economic freedom, and equality of opportunity in the world, just like the Internet did for publishing information.
It's really hard to argue that bitcoin doesn't have many legitimate benefits to companies that are legal businesses when you have Dell and Expedia and all these companies now accepting it.